Bill Shore’s Letters

Letter From the International Newsstand

Originally published: May 2004

Dear Friend,

Last Thursday, April 29, after the bombing of a former UN building in Damascus, the Financial Times coverage was headlined "Syria Vows To Stamp Out Terrorism After Attack." I read the entire article, eager to find out how they were going to do it. But the only actions described were putting security forces on high alert and keeping embassies closed. The rest of the article just speculated about who the terrorists were. As different as are Syria and the United States, we have the same ideas about fighting terrorism with heightened security and military force. I expected a qualitative difference by orders of magnitude between their vision and ours. Not necessarily.

It set me to thinking about how narrow is the effort to combat terrorism. Our brave military men and women are doing the best they can under horrendously challenging circumstances. But their focus, like Syria's, is containing it and stamping it out. What is being done to offer the world a compelling alternative to the conditions that breed terrorism? What proposals are breathtakingly bold enough to rivet the world's attention as the terrorists have riveted ours?

One of politics' golden rules is that you can't beat something with nothing. It was first drilled into me 20 years ago when Senator Gary Hart was running for president and insisting on having positive proposals of his own, rather than criticizing the status quo or just tearing down the other guy. The same holds in geo-politics.

On April 21, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in an interview with the French paper Le Monde, argued, "The main cause of terrorism is injustice. Wherever there's pressure or injustice, there are bomb attacks and terrorism." Without excusing a single despicable act of terrorist evil, suppose Mubarak is correct. Suppose terrorism abates not in the face of military strength, but in the face of justice. What would a bold campaign to promote global justice look like? Has America produced either Democrat or Republican able to describe what a just world looks like and how we get there?

Leave aside for the time being whether we can afford it. Can we first even imagine it? For example:

Could additional spending deliver the most basic relief, through clean water and immunizations, where today there is sickness, suffering and despair? Upcoming Conference of Leaders keynote Jeffrey Sachs concluded in a report for the World Health Organization that 25 billion more a year -- an amount we currently spend about every four months in Iraq -- would save 20,000 lives a day.
Could presidential leadership inspire every non-profit and community-based organization in the U.S. to develop a partnership with a "sister NGO" somewhere in the underdeveloped world, sharing learning and resources, attentive to their needs in addition to our own?
Could we expand the school breakfast and school lunch programs globally, as Senator McGovern has proposed, and heed the words of poet Pablo Neruda who wrote: "Let us sit down to eat with all of those who haven't eaten... for now I ask no more than the justice of eating."
Could Congress create something between a technologically superior military and a Peace Corps comprised mostly of English teachers, perhaps a Strength Corps that enables doctors, engineers, business leaders, financial planners and marketing experts etc. to engage in high impact service sabbaticals around the world?

These are mere examples of steps to counter "state-sponsored terrorism" with "state-sponsored justice." But they are also at the heart of the work of Share Our Strength and so many other organizations in the rapidly growing but still underutilized civic sector. Combat operations half a world away do not require our participation or sacrifice. But justice across the street or around the globe cannot be achieved without it. Failing to understand and assert this would be as great a breach of responsibility as any of the intelligence failures prior to September 11. In today's ever more dangerous world national security does not depend only on the effectiveness of the CIA and the Marines. It depends on the effectiveness of you and me as well, measured in everything from the revenues at Taste events to the way we collaborate with corporate and other non-profit partners. That no one in government has challenged all of us to play a role may someday merit its own examination.

On the same Friday evening that Ted Koppel solemnly recited the names of America's fallen soldiers on Nightline, the outdoor cafés and restaurants on Boston's Newbury Street were jammed with affluent diners who have no more connection to the war in Iraq than they do the Peloponnesian War. That was likewise the case everywhere from Dupont Circle to Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade.

What kind of shared sacrifice could the rest of us be called on, or better yet, inspired to make? Few of us may be trained, equipped or prepared to fight on a battlefield, but aren't all of us able to promote justice? Could we drive smaller cars? Expand educational exchange programs? Buy war bonds? Do with a little less and share our strengths a little more? I don't have the answers. But we'd be a stronger nation in a safer world, if we started asking the questions.

The most common refrain heard during the investigation of the 9/11 Commission, from Richard Clarke to Condoleeza Rice, in explaining why September 11 caught us off guard was that our adversaries "were on a war time footing, but we were not." That is still the case today. The choices we debate and make are often less consequential in the long-term than the choices we fail to debate or recognize as in need of debating. We are at such a moment in the world today, one that requires us to determine if the battle ahead consists of crushing terrorism, or also of championing justice.

War has always stained man's history. Bold ideas have always swept it. We've tried the former. We need the latter. Now.

Billy Shore's signature